This invention relates to book covers of the character which are utilized to provide protection for the binding of a book and further characterized by the fact that they may be readily installed upon or removed from the binding of said book. Furthermore, the removable, protective book cover of the invention is characterized by the provision of one or more transparent overlays secured in operative relationship with said cover whereby said overlays may be disposed in operative relationship with said book, and being transparent, may be utilized to make temporary notations upon the surface thereof relevant to the subject matter of the page with which said overlay or overlays are associated.
Illustrative of the utilization of the device of my invention is its association with a conventional map book consisting of a plurality of sectional maps devoted to a particular geographic area such as a county, city, or state and consisting of a plurality of pages suitably bound in operative relationship whereby contiguous pages may be disposed in side to side relationships. Map books of this character are customarily intensively used by sales persons and individuals whose occupations entail frequent recourse to such map books to ascertain the location of their destinations which may be the offices of customers or the like.
Since the maps incorporated in conventional map books are imprinted on relatively fragile paper, making notations or inscriptions thereupon will ultimately obscure the surface of the map page and result in limited utility of the relevant section of the book.
Therefore, the provision of the overlays in conjunction with the removable cover of the invention eliminates this undesirable consequence of making notations on the surface of the map itself since relevant notations can be made upon the surface of the transparent overlay.
Frequently, it is necessary to utilize two map sections in conjunction with each other, and the provision of a plurality of overlays, secured to opposite edges and/or to the same edge of the cover of my invention, permits the overlays to be disposed in operative relationship with the relevant surfaces of the map sections being utilized with corresponding notations thereupon.
Prior art overlays intended to be utilized with an imprinted surface are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,791,040 and 1,510,110. The U.S. Pat. No. 2,791,040 teaches of the provision of a transparent envelope in which a drawing or other imprinted material can be installed, with notations being made upon the transparent portion of the envelope, while the U.S. Pat. No. 1,510,110 teaches a book binding having a permanent overlay associated with one edge thereof.
Among other things, overlays in prior art devices tend to "gap" away from the pages of the book, making it difficult to transfer information from the page to the overlay. This problem is exacerbated for thick books, and is particularly acute when the overlay is used on pages which are relatively far away from the cover of such a book, or when the desired information is at the outer edges of the pages of the book.